BJJ DVD Project – Mundials 2004, Finals

We picked a DVD at random and it was Mundials 2004, Disc 1. It contains the final match of each weight class and the absolute. If this seem scrambled, it’s because I’m mostly going off memory (and a few scribbled notes) of close to 4 hours of fights.

Galo – Gabriel Moraes vs Gerenias Maia

Unfortunately, I don’t know who is who since they didn’t line the names up with the fighters due to a strange camera angle. We’ll just say blue gi and white gi.

After a guard pull by white gi, blue gi passes the single leg guard (sitting up on one leg) by stepping around the outside, though white scrambles back to guard before points are scored. Here is Rodolfo Vieira teaching the same pass:

Blue gi passes by getting a leg lace (threaded between the legs) with a grip on the pants of the bottom leg. Then something funny happens. White is struggling to escape side control, and blue quickly backs off to standing and lets white get up. Blue immediately pulls deep half guard sweep, gets an underhook on the leg by the head, wedges his knee in and gets a sweep.

Blue gi ends up standing in open guard, gets grips on the knee and passes over the leg. White turtles, so blue spins to the back but never gets hooks.

Blue wins on points.

Pluma – Bibiano Fernandes vs Fernando Vieira

Bibiano shoots for a single, but quickly drops into half guard instead. He sits into single leg guard when Vieira stays standing, then stands up into the single leg takedown after all.

Vieira lands with guard. Bibi almost passes with an over-under pass by switching his “under” hand (the one that’s usually below the hips to grab the belt) to the end of the pants to stretch it away. (Pe de Pano did this too in the 2003 Pan Ams I watched last week.)

Bibi tries passing by switching back and forth between grips on the knees and double under pass grips. He never gets there.

They end up one their feet and there is a hilarious double guard pull. I don’t remember much else but some scrambling and Fernando Vieira is somehow marked down as the ultimate winner by points.

Pena – Mario Reis vs Fredson Paixao

At this point I think I just started taking notes of the most interesting moments, so forgive me if I don’t remember every second of the match. This match is going to seem especially disjointed because the ref restarted it a lot and interfered with the flow of positions by resetting them in different positions. This gets bad enough that at one points a fighter just stares at him incredulously and the ref yells at the crowd for booing him.

Fredson gets closed guard. When Mario stands, Fredson gets the “underhook” on the opposite ankle (so his right arm reaches all the way across to the outside of Mario’s right leg). He arches to sweep Mario, but can’t, so he opens his guard and drops to reverse DLR guard.

Later, Mario is standing above Fredson’s open guard. When Fredson sits up, Mario snaps him down by the collar (so his face nearly meets his feet) and spins behind to get back control, bypassing all normal guard passing.

Fredson gets back to guard. Mario goes for a cross knee pass, then does a backstep pass while standing. Then he just keeps squatting over him. This goes on for an unusual amount of time.

Mario eventually passes to reverse kesa gatame. Fredson is trying to catch his legs. Mario hooks the near leg from below with his near leg, giving him a clear path to mount.

Scramble to half guard that ends in a single leg that goes out of bounds. Weird reset back in sitting single leg guard. Backroll sweep that turns into a scramble to the back that never earns points.

Mario wins on points.

Leve – Daniel Moraes vs Rodrigo Magalhaes

This match was so boring. Most of it has them standing head to head, grabbing the gis, bent over at the waist with their asses back. It’s the kind of BJJ match that makes judoka and wrestlers scream. Even watching it in fast forward, it just looks like they are standing in front of each other and barely shuffling their feet up and down. I think the ref issued 2-3 warning for stalling, and I thought he was going to double DQ them. What’s funny is when he’d break them up to issue the warning, they’d start posturing like they were about to launch into battle and kill each other, but then they’d just glom on and do nothing again.

Rodrigo finals goes for a snapdown to shoot, but Daniel reacts by throwing him bodily to the floor with an underhook. I think Daniel tries to pass guard but they end up on their feet where Daniel fails another attempt at muscling the throw. Honestly, at this point I was more interested in the pidgeon I had noticed making a nest in the rafters of the gymnasium.

Daniel wins on points.

Medio – Marcelo Garcia vs Cassio Werneck

Marcelo gets pulled into guard IIRC. He starts passing half guard with an underhook and heavy hips. He switches to his textbook “face the legs” pass when he runs into resistance. He gets his foot out after a few minutes of trying and immediately circles to north-south then the far side.

As he circles back to the original side, Casio tries to get to his knees, but Marcelo still has the arm blocked by his body, giving him a clear path to take the back. They roll out of bounds while Marcelo is getting his grips for a choke, and they are restarted standing in the middle.

Nothing else really happens and Marcelo wins on points.

Media Pesado – Braulio Estima vs Jacare

Braulio walks out alone and gets his hand raised because Jacare’s arm was broken in the Absolute match with Roger.

Pesado – Xande Ribeiro vs Jefferson Moura

Jefferson pulls a loose guard that Xandre immediately passes around. Jefferson manages to recover to half guard. He spends a lot of time trying to get a waiter sweep to work, but Xande has good base and prevents it, even with Jeferson almost all the way out the back door.

Xande wins on points.

Super Pesado – Roger Gracie vs Comprido

Comprido goes for a weak single leg, and Roger gets a whizzer and just slams his hips forward like he wants to run forward into mount. In the scramble, Roger is able to spin to the back. Comprido gets flattened out belly down with his legs totally straight. He eventually turns to be under mount where Roger attacks with collar chokes. The camera angle makes it hard to tell what happens, but Comprido gives up his back again and the fight ends. I’m guessing he got choked and tapped.

Pesadissimo – Terere vs Werdum

http://youtu.be/x7KM2P5q1Dk

Terere is doing his crazy Terere thing by fighting three weight classes up. Werdum is gigantic compared to him.

Before the match, there’s a delay, so Terere does this strange little dance of shuffling around and shaking his arms and wringing his hands. Werdum kinda dances around with him. Voodoo.

Terere runs around a lot but Werdum mostly throws him around and squashes him when they really engage. They go crazy. At one point, Werdum gets side control as they go out of bounds. The ref tries to pause it, and Werdum pushes Terere down into side control again, so Terere shoves him the face.

On time when they are coming back inbounds while standing, Werdum bum rushes Terere and the ref has to break it up for a proper restart.

Later, Terere circles behind the referee to put him in the way.

Werdum eventually wins on points, and then they are hugging and raising each other’s hands, and Werdum carries Terere around the ring.

Absolute – Roger Gracie vs Jacare

This is the famous match where Roger loses on points after breaking Jacare’s arm. You can watch it here:

Highlights: Roger goes for an armbar from guard that gets his guard passed and his back taken. He escapes and ends up in 50/50 guard of all places. He gets back to closed guard where this time the armbar works and breaks Jacare’s arm. Jacare spends the rest of the fight running out of bounds to avoid the takedown so he wins on points.